One use-case that used to work but no longer does in the Python 3 runqemu rewrite is to copy build artefacts and then invoke bitbake <relevant-image> -c testimage. Because bitbake is already running the runqemu script can't call `bitbake -e` in order to determine the paths to staging directories. The old runqemu used which to locate relevant binaries, we could add that as a fallback path in the new runqemu.
http://lists.openembedded.org/pipermail/openembedded-core/2016-September/126278.html
Fixed in OE-Core/Poky master